


let our hearts, like doors, open wide

by PuriPuki



Series: the dirt in which our roots may grow [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Coma, Hospitals, M/M, henlivia and loncher are background, vague and uneducated descriptions of medical procedures and practicies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 21:09:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13279932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuriPuki/pseuds/PuriPuki
Summary: Slowly, memories trickle into a flood of dreams, soft things, breakfast in bed and quiet nights and vibrant birthdays, turn to a bleed of fear and panic, where his arms won’t move and his mouth won’t breathe and his heart won’t beat. He needs to wake up. He tells himself he needs to wake up.





	let our hearts, like doors, open wide

For nearly two years, Inigo dreams, floating in the in-between of reality and the soft clutches of nothingness. Sometimes, he can reach out and grab onto whatever’s in front of him - it gives him sounds, steady beeping and rhythmic gushes of air and a quiet bustle of conversations in the distance. Something is covering his mouth, but he breathes easy - whatever’s there is breathing for him. It’s warm. Something is wrong.

 

Slowly, memories trickle into a flood of dreams, soft things, breakfast in bed and quiet nights and vibrant birthdays, turn to a bleed of fear and panic, where his arms won’t move and his mouth won’t breathe and his heart won’t beat. He needs to wake up. He tells himself he needs to wake up. 

 

The worst memory to trickle in is the one from just before everything goes blank - he’s laughing. Music is playing. They’re waiting at a stoplight. Olivier is singing. Olivier is happy. Something is moving in the distance. He can’t see what it is. He doesn’t pay any attention to it. The stoplight turns green. They move. There’s a noise. They tumble. And roll. There’s something red. It’s warm and he doesn’t like it. Music is still playing. Olivier is crying. He can’t breathe. 

 

Inigo hates this memory. 

 

He hates the memory of not being able to breathe, and sometimes he hates the thing over his mouth for breathing for him. He hates how he can hear his son, who's always happy and smiling and laughing except for when they watch  _ Spirit  _ and he cries harder than Inigo can even comprehend, wailing and screaming for him when he can’t do anything. 

 

Sometimes the memories he dreams of aren’t always bad.

 

The second most common memory, after the last one he has, is the first one he has of Olivier. It’s adoption day. Olivier is 6 months old. He has rosy cheeks and a perpetual smile and babbles away at them. Inigo doesn’t want to let him go. Gerome is driving home, and Inigo sits in the back with Olivier in his car seat and sings nursery rhymes to him because they discover that Olivier doesn’t like the rumble of the engine in Gerome’s car. He remembers that they come home to their parents, all four eager to meet their first grandchild. He distantly recalls that word,  _ first _ , like there would be more children to come after their baby boy. He isn’t opposed. His mother coos over Olivier, and he tugs on her hair. Something he does makes his father in law laugh. 

 

Olivier is a miracle. 

 

Something is still wrong.

 

Inigo rarely is able to hold onto whatever’s there for long. He never gets anything more than a few rapid clicks, someone - a woman? - walking over, a warm hand on his forehead? It always leaves too fast to tell. 

 

Sometimes, if he’s lucky, he thinks he can hear his son singing to him.

 

Inigo doesn’t want to dream anymore. He wants whatever is on his face to get the hell off and he wants to see his son. He wants to see his husband. He wants to see his mom and his dad and all his friends and he wants to go home, home to their dog and bearded dragon and the gross domesticity he knows Gerome never thought he’d fall into. 

 

He wants out. He wants to be awake.

 

He opens his eyes.

 

The ceiling of whatever room he’s in is white, that gods awful popcorn puff garbage he remembers from high school. His throat hurts. He rips the mask off his face, and the steady stream of air that felt so familiar is gone. His arms are numb, and he can’t push himself up enough to sit. The lights are bright. He wants his family. 

 

When he tries to call for someone, all that comes out is a cough that burns his throat. He can move his arms enough to whack the side of the bed, loud enough to call the attention of a passing nurse. She looks surprised to see him awake.

 

“Sir, don’t panic, you’re safe - you’ve been in a coma for a year. You’re at Saint Maria’s Hospital, don’t panic.” Her voice is soft and steady, and it sounds familiar. Her name tag reads  _ Denise, RN _ . 

 

“I.. want my son..” He chokes out, hoarse and barely a whisper. Denise’s eyes widen, like she didn’t expect him to speak. “P-please, my.. my f-family..”

 

“I’ll call them,” She says, and he believes her “but first, I need to make sure you’re okay. Do you remember what happened before?”

 

“The car, it… we.. we were going to dance practice.” He furrows his brow, trying to think without reliving that brutal memory. “Were… were we hit? Ollie was, he was… crying.”

 

“You were hit by a drunk driver, yes.” Denise doesn’t say anything about his son. That scares him more than the idea of having been comatose for two years.

 

“Olivier, is… he alright?” There’s something wet on his cheeks, but he doesn’t care. Denise looks over to the small table, where a half eaten slice of cake sits abandoned. 

 

“Your son is fine. Your husband brings him to visit nearly every day.” Denise has a small smile on her face, but it seems bitter. Inigo doesn’t like being this good at reading people. “He asks me when you would wake up every time.”

 

He doesn’t ask anything else until she’s done fiddling with the drip, and checks his reflexes. He can still move his fingers and toes, which Denise says it good - his arms and legs will be back online in a while, she explains, and Inigo is grateful. 

 

“What day is it?” He asks, wincing when she pulls the IV from his arm. “Was it really… a whole year?”

 

“Yes, just about. You were hit in early November of 2016. It’s Christmas day, 2017. I know it probably feels like a lot, but think of it this way - your son will have you back for Christmas.” Denise muses, before stepping out. 

 

It’s a long two hours before she steps back in, but nurses have been in and out - bringing water, easy food to hold down, monitoring his vitals. He snapped at one of them, who tried to throw what was now an obviously wasted slice of cake, because that was all he had to hold onto until they got here. He’s more upset than he should be when it’s gone after they wheel him back to his room post-MRI

 

“What time is it?”

 

“It’s 12:43 am. We’ll be calling your husband soon.” Denise says, sitting down at his bedside. He thinks of how many nights Gerome might’ve spent wide awake in that chair, too tired to even sleep. He tries his best not to think of all the restless nights Olivier must’ve had. “It’s usually better to give patients like you, who are coming out of comas, a few hours to settle and give us time to make sure you’re out of the woods before we bring in family.”

 

Inigo hums in agreement, arms finally awake enough to push himself into sitting up. His back aches, stiff from lack of movement. It’s going to take him months to recover from this enough to be able to dance again. 

 

“It’s strange that you haven’t asked about why you were comatose. Most patients usually do.” Denise comments, which he finds strange - he’s hardly known any medical professional to be actually decent at bedside care, much less at bedside conversation. 

 

“It doesn’t matter. I’m okay, right?”

 

“As far as your scans can show, yes. But you’re going to have to take it easy for a while, and don’t think you’re getting out of here today. You will need some physical therapy and we need to make sure you don’t have anything funky going on in your head. Y’know, standard stuff.” Denise tells him. 

“Hmm. I’ll still be able to see my family while I’m being held captive, yeah?”

 

Denise snorts. “Yeah, during visiting hours.”

 

“Okay. Good.” Inigo returns to the tray set in front of him. It’s a bagel, a small bowl of cheerios, he thinks, without milk, and water. It tastes like shit, but it’s only a matter of time before his mother brings him something better, like baklava or her family’s soup, and he doesn’t doubt that Olivier will bring him more cake from Noire’s pastry shoppe.

 

He finds himself wondering what his friends have been doing these two years, whether or not Laurent’s finally finished up that degree or if Noire’s found the time to make that carrot cake she always talked about, or if Cynthia’s managed to get that location across town for another flower shop, or if Severa and Kjelle are  _ finally _ together-together, and whose had kids and who’s still traveling the world. He hates himself for not being there. It’s not his fault and he knows this, but he’s always been a little too good at this whole self-blaming thing. 

 

A nurse pops her head in, telling Denise that there’s an open phone line. They both smile at him, and he smiles back. It’s almost time.

 

A few minutes later, the same nurse drops back in. She tells him that his family is on their way, and it’s almost too good to be true. She leaves before he can say anything, and it’s probably for the best. He’s quiet for a long time. 

 

There are, indisputably, so many things he must’ve missed. 

 

Olivier’s first day in elementary school. One birthday for Olivier, one for Gerome. Two holiday seasons. One father’s day. At least three parent teacher conferences. Too many dinners and breakfasts and bedtime stories to count. How many  _ I love you _ ’s has he missed out on, how many precious memories had been stolen from him? 

 

He’s scared. 

 

But any and all fear he has is gone when he hears the sound of running and stumbling feet in the hallway, squeaky like new shoes. Someone is yelling after whoever is running, begging him to slow down, because  _ “.. Olivier, you don’t run in hospitals!” _

 

Oh. 

 

Olivier stumbles into Inigo’s room like a storm, clambering onto his bed even though the nurses will probably scold him for it later, talking too fast for Inigo to keep up, but he can get the gist of it - Olivier loved and missed him and they visited every day, and then they’re both crying because gods dammit, yes, Inigo is awake and he isn’t going back to sleep anytime soon. 

 

Gerome is already a little teary before he catches up to his son, and he doesn’t bother to hide it. There are absolutely horrible bags underneath his eyes, worse than he remembers them ever being, and he looks a little gaunt in the face, but right then, Gerome was the most beautiful thing Inigo had ever seen.

 

They spend three hours there, awake and catching Inigo up on everything he’s missed ( _ Olivier rambles on and on about all his friends from the first grade and how nice his teacher was and how they have a new gecko named Fizzy because Minerva II seemed lonely and that ojiichan taught him a lot of new words in Japanese and- _ ) before Olivia and Henry arrive. 

 

Olivia and Henry openly cry when they see him, awake and with color in his face and smiling, and it’s all in all a very tear-filled event. Come the morning, word has made its way out and Inigo’s room is suddenly filled to the brim with people - everyone, even Owain who according to Gerome was in the middle of a European tour with Brady, - and all the flowers and balloons that came with them. 

 

Laurent pleasantly tells him that he has finished his English degree, just in time for him and Lucina to begin preparing a nursery (Lucina is the one to show him the sonogram, from last week - 4 months!), and Noire is very happy to say that she did manage to finally bake the perfect carrot cake and would be more than pleased to bring some by for him when the nurses give their say so. Cynthia shows him pictures of her newest location, and tells him that all of the flowers they gave him were from her shop. Severa shyly flashes an engagement ring to him, and agrees to let him be her best man, “but only because you were in a fucking coma”. Kjelle says that Olivier can most definitely be the ring bearer. Owain tells him that their show is still very much lacking without his performances, but Brady smacks him upside the head and tells him that they’re both very glad that he’s awake through tears. 

 

Denise is met with thorough resistance when she tells them they have to leave for at least a short time, but they concede when Inigo assures them. Olivier, Gerome and both sets of their parents stay, but only because they’re the few listed as family members. 

 

Inigo’s MRI scans stay clean.

Physical therapy is taxing, but he lives for the smile he knows Olivier will give him when they can dance together again (and more than that, Inigo needs his flexibility back - gods know Gerome must’ve been missing that). 

 

Olivier’s ninth (his  _ ninth _ , Inigo thinks, god he’s getting old) birthday is celebrated in the hospital, but Gerome assures Inigo that it’s much better than his eighth birthday.

 

In late March, the winter season yields its final attempt at a blizzard by gracing them with soft flurries that barely impact the roads. Denise rolls Inigo out of the hospital in a wheelchair, even though he insists he can walk (they both know very well that he can - she’s caught him doing dance stretches more than once), with Gerome and Olivier waiting for him outside, car at the ready. 

 

It’s a good day to go home.


End file.
